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The red circle highlights a bright speck in a picture sent back from the right-hand navigation camera on NASA's Mars Curiosity rover on April 3.

Bright Blips on Mars Pictures Spark a Buzz Among UFO Fans

By Alan Boyle

Bright spots that look like a beacon flashing from a distant Martian hillside are attracting attention from the UFO crowd — but are they real or just photographic glitches?

The evidence so far favors a pixel dropout as the explanation, but the coincidence is curious enough to stir up chatter on websites such as Disclose.tv and UFO Sightings Daily. The webmaster for the latter site, Scott C. Waring, is having as much fun with this one as he had last year with the Mars Rat and the Martian Iguana.

A picture taken by the right navcam on the day before shows a similar bright speck, seen from a slightly different perspective. The only problem is that the navigation camera is a stereo system, and the left-hand navcam doesn't show the brightspots on either day.

That suggests that the "light" might be a bit of lost data that left blank spots only on the right-hand navcam pictures. And it suggests that people are looking at the pictures from Curiosity very, very closely. If there's a message from Mars flashing in any photos, you can bet somebody's going to see it.

We've asked NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to take a look at the pictures, and if we hear anything back, you'll find the update right here. Now, about that deer-cam UFO...

Update for 9 p.m. ET April 7: Doug Ellison, an imaging guru who happens to work at JPL, quickly told me in a Twitter update that the bright spot is due to a "cosmic ray hit" affecting the rover. (Later: The Surrey Space Center's Chris Bridges agrees.)

Update for 12:50 a.m. ET April 8: Here's a recap of the four pictures we're talking about:

Update for 3 p.m. ET April 8: JPL sent along a couple of potential explanations for the bright spot, and they don't include the cosmic ray scenario. Get the details here.

First published April 7 2014, 5:42 PM

Alan Boyle

Alan Boyle is the science editor for NBC News Digital. He joined MSNBC.com at its inception in July 1996, and took on the science role in July 1997 with the landing of NASA's Mars Pathfinder probe. Boyle is responsible for coverage of science and space for NBCNews.com.

Boyle joined NBCNews.com from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where he was the foreign desk editor from 1987 to 1996. Boyle has won awards for science journalism from numerous organizations, including the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Association of Science Writers. Boyle is the author of "The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference." He lives in Bellevue, Wash.